COMPARISON AND VALIDATION OF FOUR ARCTIC SEA ICE THICKNESS PRODUCTS OF THE EC POLAR ICE PROJECT

摘要

Sea ice thickness (SIT) is an important parameter formonitoring Arctic change, modelling and predictingweather and climate, and for navigation and offshore operations.However, SIT is still not very well monitoredoperationally. In the European Commission (EC) FP7project “POLAR ICE”, three novel SIT products based ondifferent satellite data as well as SIT from a state-of-theartocean and sea ice model are fed into a common datahandling and distribution system for end users. Each SITproduct has different scopes and limitations as to, e.g.,spatial and temporal resolution, ice thickness range andgeographical domain. The aim of this study is to comparethe four different SIT products with each other andwith SIT in-situ measurements in order to better understandthe differences and limitations, and possibly giverecommendations on how to best profit from the synergyof the different data.